Moribund Salton Sea fast becoming a Californian health hazard
- 9 years ago
The Salton Sea, California’s largest lake, is shrinking. The moribund water is fed by agricultural run-off, but as California is baking in a four-year-drought, the water is evaporating at a rapid rate.
The Salton Sea is drying up so fast the boat launch at Red Hill Marina is now almost a half mile from the shoreline. pic.twitter.com/k3wFwZH8f8— Scott London (@scottlondon) July 4, 2015
The locals are concerned that dust from the lake bed is contributing to a rise in asthma and other respiratory illness in a region where air quality already falls below federal standards.
Samia Khan is a paediatrician at the Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo health centre:“It affects me personally as well, since myself and my family developed asthma while living here. I never had problems before.”
The lake is known as the ‘Accidental Sea,’ it was created 1905 when the Colorado River breached a dike and two years of flooding filled a sizzling basin.
As the lake recedes the dust blowing off the bank
The Salton Sea is drying up so fast the boat launch at Red Hill Marina is now almost a half mile from the shoreline. pic.twitter.com/k3wFwZH8f8— Scott London (@scottlondon) July 4, 2015
The locals are concerned that dust from the lake bed is contributing to a rise in asthma and other respiratory illness in a region where air quality already falls below federal standards.
Samia Khan is a paediatrician at the Clinicas de Salud del Pueblo health centre:“It affects me personally as well, since myself and my family developed asthma while living here. I never had problems before.”
The lake is known as the ‘Accidental Sea,’ it was created 1905 when the Colorado River breached a dike and two years of flooding filled a sizzling basin.
As the lake recedes the dust blowing off the bank